Nation is to commemorate century year of Mahatma
Gandhi’s return to India from January 2015. With the arrival of Gandhi a gust of
fresh thoughts rejuvenated India. He through his speeches and writings touched
every cord of Indian life and education is one of them. Gandhi’s views on education have been compiled
and edited in two slim books, Basic Education (1951) and Towards
New Education (1953). These writings are mostly miscellaneous,
consisting of letters, speeches, extracts from books, and so on, but together
they may be taken to constitute a coherent philosophy of education.
Mahatma
Gandhi had read Emerson, Ruskin and Mazzini. He also had read The Upanishads. All confirmed the view
that education does not mean knowledge of letters but it means character
building, it means knowledge of duty. This belief is articulated in his life
and works. He believes that generally people do not have any idea of what true
education is. We assess the value of education in the same manner as we assess
the value of land or of shares in the stock exchange. We want to provide only
such education as would enable the students to earn more. We hardly give any
thought to the improvement of character of the educated.
In a letter to his son
Ramdas, Gandhi writes: “True education lies in serving others; oblige them
without the feeling of one-uppishness. ... I am not worried about your bookish
learning as long as you perform your duties and observe solemn ethical conduct.
For me carrying out fundamentals of ethics is duty.” For Gandhi to do good to
others and serve them without any sense of egoism – is the real and true
education.
According to Gandhi the true
occupation of a man is to build his character. It is not necessary to learn
something special for earning. Gandhi was of strong belief that the man who
does leave the path of morality never starves. So he advises his son in a letter
that learning to live a good life is in itself education. All else is useless.
In his book Hind Swaraj he writes: “What is the
meaning of education? It simply means knowledge of letters. To teach boys
reading, writing and arithmetic is called primary education. A peasant earns
his bread honestly. He has ordinary knowledge of the world. He knows fairly
well how he should behave towards his parents, his wife, his children and his
fellow villagers. He understands and observes the basic rules of morality. But
he cannot write his own name. What do you propose to do by giving him knowledge
of letters? So the knowledge of letters does not make men of us. It does not
enable us to do our duty.”
He once said that education
is that which helps us to know the atman, our true self; God and truth. To acquire this knowledge, some persons may feel the need
for a study of literature, some for a study of physical sciences and some
others for art. But every branch of knowledge should have as its goal knowledge
of the self. That is so in the Ashram. Students carry on numerous activities
with that aim in view. All of them are, in Gandhian sense of the term, true
education. Those activities can also be carried on without any reference to the
goal of knowledge of the self. When they are so carried on, they may serve as a
means of livelihood or of something else, but they are not education. In an
activity carried on as education, a proper understanding of its meaning,
devotion to duty and the spirit of service are necessary.
Gandhi was of
firm belief that literary education should follow the education of the hand-
the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast. He says that it is a
superstition to think that the fullest development is impossible without the
knowledge of the art of reading and writing. That knowledge undoubtedly adds
grace to life, but it is in no way indispensible for man’s moral, physical or
material growth. His purpose is to “put training in craft on the same footing
as education in letters. Those who thoroughly understand this point will never
be eager for a literal education at the training in craft. Their book-learning
will shine better and also prove of greater benefit of the purpose.” In this
way, Gandhi wants our education has to be revolutionized. The brain must be
educated through the hand. He asks, “Why should you think that mind is
everything and hands and feet nothing?” Those who do not train their hands and
go through the ordinary rut of education, lack ‘magic’ in their life. An
education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and evil, to
assimilate one and eschew the other is a misnomer.
Gandhi says that
there are certain aims of education and first of them is nationalism. He writes
that education is just a means. If it is not accompanied by truthfulness,
firmness, patience, and other virtues, it remains sterile and sometimes does
harm instead of good. The object of education is not to earn money, but to
improve oneself and serve the country. If this object is not realized, it must
be taken that the exchequer spent on education has been wasted.
Indian community
must realize that without the right kind of education the community will not
only remain backward, but become increasingly so. Knowledge is justified only
when it is put to good use and employed in public cause.
Addressing
students at YMCA, Madras on April27.1915 he asks: “Are you receiving an
education which will make you worthy to realize that ideal which will draw the
best out of you, or is it an
education which has become a factory for making Government employees or clerks
in commercial offices? Is the goal of the
education that you are receiving that of mere employment whether in the
Government departments or other departments? If that be the goal of your
education, if that is the goal that you have set before yourselves, I feel and
I fear that the vision the Indian society pictured for
itself is far from being realized.”
In Young India, (1 October, 1919) he writes “If education
is to be bought at the price of manliness and self-respect, the price is too
heavy. ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’ Self-respect and character are above
means of livelihood or a career. I am sorry that so many students have taken
their expulsion so much to heart. The parents as well as students must revise
their ideas about education. Education is treated merely as a means of earning
a livelihood and acquiring a status in society. These are not unworthy
ambitions. But they are not everything in life. There are many other honourable
means of acquiring wealth and status. There are many independent activities in
life which one may undertake without having to contemplate loss of
self-respect. And there is no better or cleaner passport to status in society
than honesty and selfless service of fellow-beings. If, therefore, after due
effort, the college door remains banged in the students’ faces, they should not
lose heart but seek other means of livelihood. And if the other students will
empty the recalcitrant colleges as a matter of respectful protest, they and
India will not be losers, but both will be considerable gainers.”
Fearlessness is
the foundation of all education, the beginning and not the end. Purity of
personal life is the other indispensable condition for building a sound
education.
Gandhi exhorts that teachers must be men or women of high
moral character. Conditions must be created to enable the poorest Indian to
receive the best possible education. There must be a happy union of literary
knowledge and Dharma. Education must be related to the conditions of life in
our country. And the heavy burden on the minds of young men resulting from the
use of an alien language as the medium of instruction must be removed. Unless education
is reshaped so as to fulfill the foregoing the level of the life of Indian people
cannot be raised. True national education should be imparted through the
language of each province. The teachers must be men of high ability. The school
should be located at a place where students would get clean drinking water,
pure air and a peaceful atmosphere. The surroundings must be perfectly healthy.
The scheme of education must provide for securing to the students knowledge of
the main occupations and religions of India.
In Harijan 2
November 1947, he writes that the Basic Education has grown out of the
atmosphere surrounding us in the country and is in response to it. It is,
therefore, designed to cope with that atmosphere. This atmosphere pervades
India’s seven hundred thousand villages and its millions of inhabitants. Forget
them and you forget India. India is not to be found in her cities. It is in her
innumerable villages.
The
following are the fundamentals of Basic Education:
1. All
education to be true must be self-supporting, that is to say, in the end it
will pay its expenses excepting the capital which will remain intact.
2. In
it the cunning of the hand will be utilized even up to the final stage, that is
to say, hands of the pupils will be skillfully working at some industry for
some period during the day.
3. All
education must be imparted through the medium of the provincial language.
4. In
this there is no room for giving sectional religious training. Fundamental
universal ethics will have full scope.
5.
This education, whether it is confined to children or adults, male or female,
will find its way to the homes of the pupils.
6.
Since millions of students receiving this education will consider themselves as
of the whole of India, they must learn an inter-provincial language. This
common inter-provincial speech can only be Hindustani written in Nagari or Urdu
script. Therefore, pupils have to master both the scripts.
Gandhian educational ideas, founded as they are on certain
eternal principles, will not lose their fundamental relevance in the years to
come. Policy makers will have to think of a self-supporting primary education,
which will improve the lot of the poorest of the poor. That such an
education would be based on action, problem-solving, and practical activity,
rather than mere book learning is also perfectly valid. An integral
education, which allows the whole being of a person to grow, an education which
emphases character-building and cultural identity, is once again, obviously
desirable. It is equally clear that nation has failed miserably in
state-sponsored schemes to provide free, compulsory primary education to
all. The Gandhian model, therefore, retains its relevance and
attractiveness.
References:
Gandhi,
M. K. Basic Education. Bharatan Kumarappa, ed.
Ahmedabad: Navjivan,
1951.
-----. Hind
Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. 1909; Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1984.
-----. Towards
New Education. Bharatan Kumarappa, ed. Ahmedabad:
Navjivan, 1953.
Varkey,
C.J. The Wardha Scheme of Education: An Exposition and Examination.
Madras:
Oxford University Press, 1940.
